Sunday, October 19, 2014

Let Me Tell You a Story

Hi everyone!

I’m BurritoSim the 3rd story writer at Burrito Studio. Today I’ll try to give you an insight about how random events will work in
Highlands. They’ve not been advertised much to this date, but they’ll help a
lot to give you a feel of where we want to go with Highlands’ narrative.

Random Events

Since I started working on those random events, the concept
behind them has evolved a lot. At first, the term designated mini-events that
happen at the start of each turn. They were pretty sketchy, with no backstory and
were only a way to bring a little randomness in the game. In parallel, we had
the idea of integrating short encounters in which the player had to take a
decision between two equally appealing options. Since they seemed much more
interesting and could be a good support to drive the story onward, we decided
to put the first idea in a closet to concentrate our efforts on the second.

This change of orientation was also fueled by a change in
our map designing. We changed our initial idea of corridors fighting for
independent outdoor sectors with unique features. In this kind of map, it was
very easy to write interesting short encounters that could happen almost
anywhere. To trigger these events, we thought that the player would have to put
a character in a slot near a building that we called a hot spot. At first, we didn’t
think much about the number, frequency or relative importance of the random
events in the gameplay. We just began writing some of them and planned to do a
lot more. But recently, we did a big brainstorm to decide what we wanted to do
with these events and here is the result of our reflections.

The Two Categories

First of all, we decided to bring back our short random
events, but with a different twist. We now call them bad news and they happen
once in a while at the start of your turn. As their name implies, they are
short random events that will present a setback to your war efforts, disrupt
your current strategy and force you to reassess your short-term objectives.
They are designed to give you the feeling that even with the best strategies,
you can’t plan everything beforehand. But don’t worry, most of these events
won’t be world-shattering… at least not much. J

But we also kept our short encounter events and called them hot
spots events. They will happen when you send a character to investigate a
special location in a sector you own. Most of the time, your character will
experience a small event that can be qualified as positive, negative, or
neutral, depending on its outcome. You won’t have to take any decision in these
ones. But at times, your character will get a story event that will affect his
capabilities and/or the progression of your war effort. Those events are much
more elaborate in their design and will have a profound impact on your
gameplay.

The Story Events

Basically, the story events will all have the same pattern:
after a short description of the initial situation, you will have to choose
between two or three options. Some of these choices will highlight ethical
motivations, while the others will be much more straightforward in their
approach. Depending on the option you choose, your character will have to deal
with the consequences, positive or negative, of your decision. Those events
will help strongly to make your characters unique. In them, your character will
experience their own mini-story that will give them a little time under the
spotlight. Even more, the decisions you make might change their progression
path and give them an edge that will make them invaluable in your eyes.

The impact of the story events won’t be only for the
character that will trigger them or for the gameplay, they will also give you a
glimpse into Highlands back story. They can bring the spotlight on any of your
characters, but you can also learn much about your favorite main characters in
them. Also, their value doesn’t reside only in their randomness, they’re
designed to support the main story and help to express the general emotions of
the game.

In short, even if you only have a modicum of control over
how they will play, the random events will help to shape your Highlands
experience and might even incite you to play the game again!

If you have any suggestions or ideas about any of
this, please tell us about it!